This week in episode 32 of The Changed Podcast, artist, illustrator, and wellness coach Marybel Martin joins host, Aden Nepom in thinking about how our opinions of ourselves change our outlook, health, and resourcefulness.
Marybel Martin is an incredible artist and illustrator. Perhaps you’ve seen her work on Instagram, or are already familiar with her work on Etsy. But she is also a wellness coach who utilizes art as an important part of nurturing and healing. She is also a first-generation American, born in California, and having lived in Argentina for 9 years. Her art has been shown in galleries around the world, and what’s particularly cool about that, is that she didn’t begin her art career until she was already 42 years old. Now almost a decade into her work, she is living and creating with a full heart and it shows!
In Marybel Martin’s studio, above her desk hangs an incredible painting. I asked her to share the story of the painting and if you are a creator you’ll appreciate perhaps more than anybody the significance of hanging this piece in the place where she births her creations.
This painting carries symbols of creation, represents her children but is also a piece that received harsh criticism when it was first brought from brain to brush to canvas. Hanging the painting represents embracing her creative intuition and herself! If you watch our episodes as a member of our Patreon or our story excerpts on the Art of Change YouTube channel, then you’ll have already seen it. The artwork is also the featured image on the episode show notes posted at www.thechangedpodcast.com
Her story of change, of her own fork in the road, was a story of experiencing a panic attack and realizing that the feeling of suffocation was a message from her body that she needed to do things differently. This meant self-love and acceptance, but it also meant adventure because the message received loud and clear, was that life is short.
Takeaways from this episode
You either get busy living, or you get busy dying. If you want to get the most out of life, you have to go out and live it! Waiting for someone to validate you, to tell you that you have good ideas, or that you have talent… it’s wasteful.
Your value as a creator is completely subjective. Want proof? Look around you! While there may be lots of people out there doing what you do better and succeeding… there are also lots of folks out there doing a ridiculously terrible job by your measure who are immensely successful. I like what Marybel said here which is, that even if one person is excited to buy what you’re selling, then there are thousands more just like them who simply haven’t found you yet.
Life is filled with secret menus. We often view people who are really successful and wonder how they thought of that great idea, gamed the system, or did it so uniquely… and it’s because they were ordering off the secret menu! I wrote more about this idea, which you can go read on LinkedIn.
Resources
During our ridiculous 2nd season segment: Aden Asks You a Bunch of Questions And You Answer Them As Quickly As Possible, Marybel identified The Artists Way as a book worth recommending. She is not the first! Author Amy Gentry, also suggested this book in our first episode of the season. You can listen to that here.
You can order a copy of The Artists Way from Powells Books based in Portland.
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How a panic attack actually helped Marybel Martin, episode 32